Tech and #climatechange people...

Can anyone else confirm that @awscloud has *removed* their claim that they have five 100% "sustainable" regions - Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt and US Gov Cloud...?

The normal URL redirects elsewhere: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/
This is a *BIG* deal because at first glance, it now looks like it is not possible to host sustainably on AWS. This may change, but I can't see how to do it.

You can't just pick a region and take it on trust.

I suspect this is because they can no longer back up the claim.
There are organisations that have been looking into this information and @awscloud have *not* released data to backup their claims.

And that's a problem. Without data it's simply a claim.

And now it looks like it is no longer something they can say.
In one sense, I'm pleased. It means that what AWS says is now more truthful. In another sense I'm disappointed, because I was hoping that AWS were actually doing what they were saying.

This matters though.

cc @bcmerchant @amywestervelt @emorwee and whoever else is interested.
I was certain there was more data on the "carbon neutral" or "sustainable" regions on there before... there was.

December 2018, @awscloud dropped the reference to "carbon neutral" regions.

Before re:invent 2018
https://web.archive.org/web/20181129114130/https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/

At re:invent 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20181206122052/https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/
So that's why @anne_e_currie and I (and others) have been under the impression that these @awscloud regions have been "carbon neutral".

Except it looks less and less to me like these regions were "carbon neutral".

Without data, it's actually impossible to know.
Amazon is one of those orgs that knows how to make the community do marketing for it.

Ambiguity makes those of us who want Amazon to decarbonize and provide data around @awscloud carbon footprint so that we can use it, look like fools.

Openness and transparency please Amazon.
But effectively, what @awscloud has now done, is *dropped* the concept of "carbon-neutral" regions (Dec 2018), and *dropped* the concept of the five ambiguous green (Sep 2020) or sustainable regions and replaced it with:

Well zero sustainable/green/carbon-neutral regions.

None.
I think I'm going to blog about this tomorrow.

It feels like @awscloud are going backwards not forwards.

They *may* simply be putting more honest information out and that's good, but I'm not happy because it feels like they have not been honest with the green regions.
Blog here: https://twitter.com/PaulDJohnston/status/1308391755922972672
You can follow @PaulDJohnston.
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